How do you practise body acceptance while improving your health?

February 7, 2024 11:09 AM

(CW: weight stuff) I am fat and I really want to not feel bad about that. What does body acceptance look like for you? Is there a way to take the idea out of my head and turn it into a lived practice, while still actively working to improve my health?

In theory, body acceptance sounds perfect and wonderful. In practice, I'm also trying to get healthier for non-weight related reasons, and it's hard to know how to do that without resorting to old habits like dieting and calorie-counting, and using the scales to track progress. All that stuff gives me anxiety, which has given me IBS.

So... how does a fat lady enjoy being her fat self, while moving more and fixing her relationship with food? I know there's a lot of advice out there on this topic, but it's overwhelming and conflicting and so I seek the measured wisdom of MeFites. Thanks everyone.

posted by guessthis to Health & Fitness (20 answers total)

Maybe start with exercise. It can be nice to have a body that feels stronger and more capable. At least for me, exercise doesn't particularly help me lose weight so that's not the motivation anyway.
I would just focus on getting into a new exercise routine that works for you and not worry about what you are eating until after you are feeling the benefits of the exercise program.

When you are ready to deal with what you eat, focus on what "eating healthy" looks like outside of calories and weight loss. Maybe start with making sure you get your "five a day" of fresh fruits and vegetables (canned and frozen OK backups) as well to nudge your diet in the right direction without have to restrict, count or measure.
posted by metahawk at 11:19 AM on February 7 [6 favorites]

maybe the best thing is to start simply. what type of physical activity do you enjoy? (I am not calling this exercise!) can you find somewhere nice to go for walks? do you have access to a pool?

what sorts of nourishing foods do you enjoy? do you have access to good produce? can you add more fruits and veggies that you like? I mean yummy satisfying foods that are also deemed to be healthy in general terms? would you like help finding some great recipes for delicious meal-type salads, simple veggie-forward pasta dishes? try to ahem "gamify" your physical activity and eating choices as rewards, not punishments or requirements. think of these rewards as loving the body you inhabit. I'm sure it deserves it 100%, just as it is right now.
posted by supermedusa at 11:21 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]

I'm also trying to get healthier for non-weight related reasons,

If your goals are a broad idea of "get healthier" and "feel okay about food" then it makes sense that your brain, mired in a lifetime of diet culture, automatically pivots to calories and dieting as the solution. If you really let some very specific reasons (obviously you don't have to give them here) guide you, that will help avert a lot of the diet culture/calorie counting stuff.

I'm thinking stuff as specific as, "lower my cholesterol by a measurable amount" or "improve my cardio endurance by x%" or as others pointed out above, "increase my fruit and vegetable portions by 2" or what have you. Maybe even a goal like "eat vegan one day per week" where you can set a food intention that has a benefit fully unrelated to your personal body or its size.

It gives you something to redirect your brain to when the brain wants to think mean diet body thoughts. It also gives you tangible, reportable progress, which is so helpful in keeping you going! Being able to record a streak of something instead of just waiting around for some big whole-body change is much more motivating.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:38 AM on February 7 [11 favorites]

I've always found that there was a substantial difference between rejecting society's pressures to be thinner, often to an unrealistic standard - in my opinion, always a good thing to reject - and situations where you personally feel that you yourself would be more comfortable in your body if you made changes to your weight or diet or lifestyle, independent of external scrutiny.

For me, a lot of that had to do with, at points, being at a weight where I wasn't able to do everything I personally wanted. Things like going out with family on trips, international travel. It didn't matter whether or not if I was technically "obese" or what others thought of me, but it had to do with the practical matter of being able to do things and go out into the world with my loved ones and simply being OK to do so without pain or restriction.

What are your personal desires that you're being held back from? If you're being held back from accomplishing what you want, regardless of whether that's international travel or going off meds or just freedom of movement, and you're making changes based on your own personal goals, you are not rejecting fat positivity.

You can do things for yourself.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 11:44 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]

Do you have fat friends who love you and themselves? Is it possible to cultivate those friendships if you don't have them already? Spending time doing the activities that make me feel healthy with people who are similar is incredibly validating and energizing. You are focusing on food here, while I am thinking about movement, but I find it's much easier for me to have a healthy relationship with food when I am moving in ways that feel good and healthy too.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:52 AM on February 7

To use some of the language of your question: one great way to practice body acceptance and body positivity is by spending time with people who live that way too. I'm not saying they have to be perfect, but sometimes it's easier to lift up our friends than ourselves. Find those folks and nurture relationships with them.
posted by bluedaisy at 11:53 AM on February 7 [1 favorite]

Stop conflating "healthy" with "skinny," and the question answers itself. What does healthy mean to you, if you take weight out of it? "Healthy" is probably not a very concrete goal either -- do you mean stronger? Having more endurance? Are there specific goals you want to achieve, like being able to climb the stairs at work more easily, etc? Focus on those, and love your body for what it can do, not whether it looks a certain way.
posted by lapis at 12:01 PM on February 7 [2 favorites]

I agree with the recommendations about exercise. Exercise is about being more capable and more comfortable in your daily life, which feels good! At the same time, it is (or can be) all about routine, about doing things on a regular basis (and then getting back into the routine if it's disrupted), rather than the dramatic highs and lows of weight swings (or weight plateaus). If, like me, you dislike the imposed-austerity aspect of many diet plans, focusing on something positive and finite--something you are doing, like even just taking a walk--feels a lot better than an infinite negative (don't eat that, don't eat that, don't eat that, either, ad infinitum til you fall asleep).

tumblr used to be great for alternatives to images of beauty focused on thin young white women. I guess it's probably not any more, but I was genuinely surprised how, just by being open to some stuff randomly coming across my feed, my default ideas of "beautiful" were subtly altered. If you can find sources of images like that--people confidently presenting themselves as worthy of admiration even though not being thin/young/white/femme--I do think it can be helpful.
posted by praemunire at 12:04 PM on February 7

Weighing less does not, by default, equal health. Separating those two ideas is really challenging, but also really important.

The things that have been most helpful to me are having a couple of reminders to tell myself when the diet culture bullshit sets in (currently "Hate is not the way to health" and "My body is good exactly as it is right now"), and following fat people on Instagram who are just - out in the world doing things. Some of them are athletes (Lauren Leavell, Roz the Diva), some of them are artists (Ginger Snaps Burlesque), some are activists (Radical Body Love), the only common thing is that they are all fat people posting pictures and videos of themselves being in the world.
posted by EvaDestruction at 12:13 PM on February 7 [2 favorites]

It helped me to think about food from a “more” perspective vs a “less” perspective. So eating more vegetables and drinking more water, rather than eating less calories. The giant salads I make for lunch these days probably have more calories in them than the frozen potstickers I used to heat up, but they also have more vitamins. (I also make myself frozen potstickers when I want frozen potstickers. Point is, focus isn’t on calories.) Eating an apple is in addition to that chocolate muffin I want, not as a replacement for it. Etc.
posted by rabbits plinkety plinkety plink at 12:29 PM on February 7 [5 favorites]

One thing to look at is how various foods and quantities make you feel. Nourished? Stuffed? Still hungry? Knocked out? I think how you feel three or four hours after eating will give you a lot of information, though some bad reactions can take a few days.

The problem is that "eating healthy" can be a way of sneaking in the idea that "health"= eating to not be fat, and that's the thing to avoid.

On the movement front, I've gotten a lot of good from the qi gong at energyarts.com. The idea of 70% effort has been very useful for me. It encourages improvement while avoiding injury and burnout.

I find it's also harder than it sounds. It takes consistently noticing how much effort I'm making, and giving up any idea of forcing myself or competing with my past ability. It's what can I do with moderate effort right now?
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:58 PM on February 7 [1 favorite]

I am in a similar boat! Every time I try to "fix my diet" I get freaked out and read like 750 articles that all say different things and then I give up and either go back to calorie counting (extremely boo) or just eating whatever I want without thinking about it.

I have been working with a HAES dietitian (super recommend if your insurance covers it) and one really helpful thing she taught me was that each meal should have at least one of each "thing" -- protein, carb, produce, fat -- which has been a much easier way for me to think about meals. I kept getting bogged down in like, how many servings of that a day?!?!, or macronutrients or whatever, but this feels very intuitive and also reasonable, and importantly it also doesn't feel like dieting, because as others have mentioned it's based more on adding than taking away. (Like: I pack an orange with my sandwich for lunch, or throw some broccoli and chickpeas into my cheesy noodles, or whatever)

This may be way too basic for you, and writing it down now I'm like, how has this never occurred to me, but honestly it's making it so much easier to decide what to eat every day and feel like my diet is well rounded.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 1:10 PM on February 7

1. Focus on non scale goals. “Climb a flight of stairs without getting out of breath.” “Be able to play soccer with my nieces,” “belt the really long part of that song with good breath control,” “be flexible to get underneath my sink to fix it,” “be able to carry home the big bag of cat litter.” “Eat a piece of fruit every day,”

2. Be around other people who don’t subscribe to diet talk or standards.

3. I understand “I EAT TAPAS,” point above, but I have to strongly disagree. If there were a restaurant that only had children’s sized seating, I simply would never eat there. I wouldn’t try to shrink my 6ft tall body to try and fit. I would go to a restaurant with adult sized tables and chairs. Similarly, I’m not going to focus on restaurants with flimsy chairs, or bolted down booth seats, I’m going to favor an establishment that has the type of seating that allows my friends and I to be comfortable. (Reading on the “social model of disability” is useful here).

4. And on the disability front, and this is really what finally made body acceptance possible for me, but was also so difficult- you don’t owe anybody health. It is not your duty to God, Man or Country to be in a “healthy” body. You do not owe anybody health. If you get cancer and cannot “fight” and “win” the battle, that is not a failure on your part. If you cannot climb a flight of stairs without getting out of breath, you did not fail anyone. Imani Barbarin (“crutches and spice”) has really great work on this if this is something you are interested in learning more about. Hopefully I haven’t butchered her message too badly.

And I think you can fully believe points 3 & 4and still work on improving your health, in a way that would serve YOU through point 1.
posted by raccoon409 at 1:30 PM on February 7 [9 favorites]

Body acceptance for me is the idea that I can do it fat. I haven't trained myself to not care what I look like in a swimsuit but I still go swimming and pretend to be a mermaid with my kids. In the moment doing the activity feels better than skipping it.

Also instead of weighing myself I pick different metrics to track. They change if I get bored or plateau. Weight lifting or working out with weights is really measurable and you can see progress and set goals. If you buy a kettlebell and learn to do kettlebell dead lifts and swings and a few other exercises you can start small by doing 10 of each exercise. Up the number and keep track. Eventually you might buy a second kettlebell. I started with a 10 lb and eventually bought a 20 lb. But you can apply this to any exercise. Walking on a treadmill for 20 minutes and upping the time by 5 minutes every week and then upping incline.

Having worked with the elderly I think a lot about future mobility. I don't want to be stuck like a turtle on my back if I fall on the floor so doing exercises like laying on my back and trying to get up without using my hands are hard but they feel necessary enough that I can do them. Same with stuff like balancing on 1 leg.

So finding some exercises or ways to move your body you can tolerate is key. Some people get into zumba or dancing and others like yoga. I guess try everything until you find something you can do. It's the same with food really. There's a million ways to eat healthy and lots of people trying to sell you on the 1 true way but really I think the key is finding something you don't hate that you can live with and making that your thing. Intermittent fasting, mediterranean, whatever. The people I see having the most success have a set menu of food that they eat consistently.
posted by MadMadam at 4:09 PM on February 7 [3 favorites]

I've been doing intuitive eating for about five years now. Here are some useful things I've picked up:

Doing Pilates (with a thoughtful instructor) was really helpful for un-learning assumptions about my body's limitations. Often when I thought the issue was something like, "My belly is too big to do this move," the reality was my hips were too tight and I could use stretching and practice to improve my mobility.

Working with a personal trainer who specialized in corrective exercise (sort of like a hybrid between personal training and physical therapy, aimed at improving balance, mobility, and overall strength) helped me to connect with my body. Working on balance in particular was mind-blowing. I couldn't believe how much of a difference a few months of training made.

I used to think of exercises like pushups and crunches as "basic" in the sense that anyone can do them, and I figured they were hard for me because I was just too fat. I now understand that they are "basic" in the sense that they require no equipment and are fairly straightforward movements--but at the same time, they are very hard for a beginner, fat or thin.

I've realized I internalized a ton of unhelpful ideas about exercise and health, like "Exercise only counts if you end up sweaty and exhausted," and "Food is fuel." These types of ideas stopped me from doing objectively healthy things like taking walks ("not intense enough!") and listening to my hunger and fullness cues ("you need more protein!").

Basically no one gets enough sleep, and it's one of the most important things you can do for your health. If you snore or have trouble feeling well-rested after a full night's sleep, get a sleep study. I got diagnosed with sleep apnea years ago and learned that people weren't lying when they described waking up feeling rested. I thought it was like a figure of speech. Turns out I just needed a CPAP.

Adding to my diet (e.g., a goal of having fruits or vegetables with every meal) rather than restricting it makes improving my nutrition a lot easier. Going all-in on intuitive eating allowed me to change my relationship with certain foods I used to think I couldn't control myself around (ask me about the stale Oreos in my pantry... ten years ago, I didn't know Oreos could go stale).

Finally, I want to offer something that might seem kind of discouraging, but that I think is important to face: as a fat person, you can't expect to have a pleasant or even neutral experience in exercise/health-focused spaces the way a thin person can. You may have well-intended people saying things like, "Keep it up! You'll lose weight in no time!" or trainers/instructors who make assumptions about your goals or health habits or doctors who won't take you seriously because they think you just need to lose weight to resolve your symptoms. You may encounter outright assholes who harass you or make rude comments about your body. To be clear, you deserve to access whatever health-related resources, services, or activities you wish. And I hope you find ways to incorporate exercise and other health-promoting activities into your life. But I think it's important to acknowledge the real challenges of being a fat person in health/exercise spaces. It's ok if you choose to only attend fitness classes that are explicitly size-inclusive, or if you exercise at home rather than joining a gym, if you don't want to risk one of those negative experiences. It's ok to quit a gym or fire a trainer after one bad experience of fatphobia. Taking care of your health includes protecting yourself against unnecessary stress.
posted by theotherdurassister at 4:21 PM on February 7 [6 favorites]

I know a woman who is nowhere near thin and has yet completed many long distance hiking trails, such as the Appalachian Trail. Her body takes her places and she wears hiking skirts and sleeveless tops, when the weather allows, and she doesn't feel the need to hide her body. And I've never heard her talking about her activities as a weight-loss methodology.

Knowing your legs got you up a distance of trail or to the top of a hill or a mountain, whether on foot or on a bike, is extremely satisfying. Your kickass self might come via pickleball or swimming or maybe even juggling.
posted by computech_apolloniajames at 4:30 PM on February 7

Some great advice in here! I think setting up goals based on what health really means in practice—not what it means societally, which is basically "thinness"—is going to be key. If your goal is to eat in a way that makes you feel better, and you really commit to that, then you can't eat in a way that depends on calorie restriction, because you know from experience that will make you feel worse! That probably means your first step is to spend some time thinking about what it means to feel good in your body, and how you'll know you've succeeded. We're so used to using "healthy" as a shorthand for "thin" that sometimes we forget what else it means. When you say you want to be healthier, what exactly do you mean? How will that manifest for you?

For fitness, I recommend this book, which is totally body-neutral and understanding of people who have had bad experiences with gym and fitness culture. Everything in there is going to be about how to make your body (and mind) feel good, not about how to make it look small.
posted by babelfish at 4:37 PM on February 7 [2 favorites]

I am not a doctor or health care practitioner, but I’m a person who has had a lot of disappointing health care providers in the past (main issue: not listening).

I’m very biased because I work for an endocrinologist, but my advice is to get a health care team who listen to you. This way you can have someone to call for serious or basic health care issues (I have a cold; I hurt my ankle; I need medicine for travel to a malarial zone) and also someone who can refer you to the specialists you may not need right now but someday will, or the specialists you absolutely need right now but didn’t know because, see above, they don’t listen.

Frankly I would go to a very good health care provider who will look at you as a whole person and help you to be as healthy and mobile as you want to be. We have rules in our office: no fat shaming, always listen to what the patient is and isn’t saying, and always be kind and polite and open to possibilities. Many people have basic health needs that have been overlooked or ignored for months, years, or decades because they are one or more of these things: “overweight,” female, male, anything other than white, have little formal schooling, have graduate degrees, aren’t doctors, are doctors, have another health condition, live in an area with few specialists, are GLBTQ plus, are too young, are too old, went to the right doctor who didn’t give a shiitake that day, or maybe have so many issues going on that their health care provider wants nothing to do with them.

My ENT, my gynecologist, and my UroGyn take better care of me than all of the last seven primary care doctors combined (I know there’s a good one out there somewhere-maybe.] Heck, even my dentist and my allergist genuinely care if I Am Okay, which is more than I can say for my primary care doctor, who is a good person but does not seem interested in, you know, practicing medicine or the fact that I wound up in the ER.

I got a little selfish there. I’m just saying that there are health care professionals who care and can help you to feel better and live the life you want, the way you want. I’ve seen too many patients come into our office over the last fifteen years whose diabetes has not been managed properly (or not diagnosed), ditto thyroid conditions, or who haven’t received basic education about current best practice for menopause or fatigue or weight gain or nutrition.

In the meantime, what activities make you happy, or are accessible to you? Is there a friend or a group you can team up with? I could have a full fledged gym in my house and I would never use it-I have to pay people to get me to move my body or else it’s the sofa, a book, and a bag of pretzels 24/7 (my default setting!). I like to walk, I got the right shoes and outerwear to make it easier (nicer when my feet don’t hurt and I’m not cold and wet), I went back to tap dance because I loved it as a kid and who cares if I’m 54, I check out new to me parks, I take the stairs even though I don’t wanna, I recognize that I like activities that are also social and involve music, and I say yes to trying new things through local community classes and resources and with friends, no matter how out there it sounds to very anxious me. I have fought very hard to learn: Be gentle to yourself, take it slowly, fight the idea of perfect, one new thing at a time is fine, try things you think you can’t do because you might surprise yourself, find the small moments of happiness, build connections with good people, accept that better is okay instead of perfect, some days are hard, and others are harder. We are human and can only try our best, but it’s the trying that counts.

I don’t think this answered your question, but I hope it gives you encouragement and ideas and makes you feel heard. I wish better health for you and everyone else reading.

Above all: be kind to yourself. You matter. You are seen and heard!
posted by kyraU2 at 8:35 PM on February 7 [4 favorites]

I find body neutrality more achievable than acceptance or positivity, so that's generally where I set my sights.

For my body, switching to a plant-based diet (primarily for ethical/sustainability reasons) and making regular weightlifting my main form of exercise (primarily because I want to be strong now and reduce the risk of skeletal issues when I'm old) has caused significant changes to my body's appearance and composition, without intentional weight loss, dieting, calorie counting, restrictive eating, or feeling like the exercise element is a punishment. I feel "healthier" because I'm stronger, have more stamina for physical activities, and have more flexibility, agility, and energy. All of that would still be true if my body mass hadn't changed at all, and I don't consider the ways my body shape & composition are changing because of that process to be indicators of health.

I broke up with diet culture over a decade ago as part of eating disorder recovery, and refuse to do intentional weight loss, and even in that context it's kind of startling how quickly my body is changing as a result of those diet & movement changes. To the point that it's a minor headfuck (I keep trying to touch parts of my body and finding that the flesh is several centimetres further away from my hand than flesh used to be on that body part) and I'm being mindful of not slipping into disordered patterns based on the unexpected rate of change. I grew up in an environment where my body size, food and movement choices were constantly monitored and criticised; I don't want to pretend this process was easy or didn't take time, but I'm also very surprised by how overall-okay a place I've ended up in regarding food, body and exercise given that miserable inheritance.

I'm at a stage in this journey where I no longer consider intentional weight loss an activity that actually leads to positive health outcomes. It bothers me a lot that medicine claims to be evidence-based, but that in reality the majority of medical advice about weight loss results from fatphobia, rather than any significant evidence that intentional weight loss works, is sustainable, or improves health outcomes for most people. For me, the things you expressed as "old habits" (I'm also trying to get healthier for non-weight related reasons, and it's hard to know how to do that without resorting to old habits like dieting and calorie-counting, and using the scales to track progress) no longer actually resonate as health-promoting activities, because I don't seriously believe they lead to better health outcomes (and they come with extra risks for me as someone with a significant disordered eating history; no version of disordered eating is healthy for me).

Following fat acceptance activists on social media like Virginia Sole-Smith (focus on raising kids of all body shapes in healthy ways) and Dr Asher Larmie (focus on medical fatphobia, the downsides of intentional weight loss and perimenopause) means that I get a much stronger dose of "this thing that society thinks is good and necessary is actually bad and harmful" than I do of traditional diet culture mentality while browsing social media, and that also makes it easier not to backslide towards what Kate Harding described (in an unfortunately-no-longer-available blog post) as 'the fantasy of being thin'.
posted by terretu at 3:08 AM on February 8 [8 favorites]

It's a long and ongoing process that will heavily depend on what motivates you. Here is what I've learned:

1. treat my body as though it's doing its best for me. Because it is! In return, I can give it love, take it for walks, stretch it, moisturize, etc. I try to appreciate what it can do instead of what it can't. Even little things like having dextrous fingers or a cute nose wrinkle when I laugh.

2. My motivation to exercise, turns out, is not needing to tap out too soon when dancing to my favorite cheesy cover band with a lot of other middle aged people, as I do about once a month. So the rest of the month I try to take long walks and it works. Your motivation may be something equally unique, you just need to find it. I have never cared about going down a dress size as much as I care about making it all the way through Disco Inferno without panting.

3. Food has no moral value. It's just food. You can eat it or not. I don't like vegetables but I do start to crave them if I go too long without. Eating sugar does make me feel better, but not for long. So I try to listen when my body tells me things, which means not listening to all the other food advice out there.
posted by emjaybee at 10:17 PM on February 8 [4 favorites]